It seems strange – the passing of three and a half decades of time.
Three and a half decades. Thirty-five years.
Time that passed almost like thirty-five seconds.
And our lives in thirty-five years all went in thirty-five different directions.
And last night, some of our lives returned from our journeys throughout the diaspora. We got together once again – the first time of what we hope will be many times – to remember someone who guided us on our journey.
That person who guided us was Lillian Tillman (later DeWitt), the principal of my high school, Street Academy of Albany. And last night, Lillian and her husband Ken enjoyed a reunion meal with myself (Class of ’81), Jennifer Jeffers (Class of ’80) and Freda Tillman (Class of ’81).
And in that evening, we had a blast reminiscing about the old days. About doing the play Black Through The Years. How LaRodd Graves could nail the Harry Belafonte song “Sylvie” every single time in that show. The students who performed the “debate” between W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington. And that one time – during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day performance at Cathedral Academy, one of the students went off-script and everybody had a surprising moment – but we laughed about it afterwards.
And about the memories – and whereabouts – of our classmates and teachers. We remembered the moment when Miss Mackey (the hall monitor who was everybody’s adopted grandmother) would read the newspaper, and how George Mastrangelo (our music teacher) would swap out that day’s Times Union for one from last week to see if she would notice – or the time when Miss Mackey cleaned up a countertop in the front office, and accidentally threw out Poochie Patton’s lunch – which did not make Poochie very happy. Not at all.
We shared our journeys and our travels, what has happened to us with our education and our health and our families and our children and grandchildren. Grandchildren. Jennifer and Freda have grandchildren. It’s still taking a stretch for me to imagine my high school classmates as grandparents. Parents, maybe. It’s still so much to grasp.
Freda brought Mrs. Tillman a beautiful bouquet of red roses. The card on the bouquet said “Mrs. T.” Even though we had a relaxed attitude with our teachers (we could call them by their first names, for example), Mrs. Tillman was always “Mrs. Tillman.” Or “Mrs. T.” Or, in rare occasions, “Lady T.” But that’s as far as it got. Heck, I didn’t even call her “Lillian” until maybe ten years after I graduated from college. That’s respect right there.
And we let Mrs. Tillman know how thankful we were for her guidance and for the guidance of our teachers to help us travel on the correct path. We didn’t need a handout. She showed us a way out.
We swapped addresses and phone numbers and contact information. And we set plans for another Street Academy reunion, this time in late May, and hopefully more of our classmates and educators can join us then.
Oh yeah. Wouldn’t be a reunion without a reunion photo.
More stories. More hugs. More steps forward.
This is the first of what I hope will be many reunions. And these are not just “class” reunions.
Because our classmates truly were our brothers and sisters.
And our teachers and support staff were our parents and aunts and uncles.
These reunions are our family reunions. And the more reunions we have…
The more our “family” can come together.
Chuck The Writer 
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